TRAGEDY: 5 Persons Pass Out as Fire Razes Nnewi Timber Market.

A midnight fire, yesterday, gutted part of the Nnewi Timber Market in Nnewi North Local Government Area of Anambra State, destroying goods and machines worth millions of Naira.

 Eyewitnesses said five traders in the market collapsed and were rushed to hospitals due to the magnitude of their loss.
Chief Chukwunonso Nnetu, Chairman of the Nnewi Timber Dealers Association, said that a security guard in the market alerted him around midnight about the inferno.
 Nnetu explained that fire fighters in Awka, Nnewi and Onitsha fire service stations were immediately contacted to fight the fire. According to him, “the Nnewi Fire Service men later arrived though the fire had reached an advanced stage.
 “We lost about 155 shops, 555 sawing and curving machines, valued at N2 million each, were destroyed; different categories and quantities of woods and planks were also destroyed. “We do not know the exact cause of the fire, but we have lost well over N3 billion to the inferno.”
According to him, most of the traders have lost their only means of survival unless government intervenes. Mr Jude Ugwu, the Secretary to the association, who noted that the fire affected mostly processing machines, wondered how the traders would overcome the loss in this time of recession. Ugwu, who recalled that a similar fire incident occurred in 2002, appealed to the state and Federal Governments to assist the traders recover from the loss. Mr Chukwudi Onyejekwe, a Director in the state Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, described the incident as a “painful and a bizarre situation,” considering the quantity of goods destroyed.
“The fire fighters have been battling the fire since 1a.m. The agency will later ascertain the remote cause of the fire.
 “We will assist the traders by pleading with the state and federal governments to come to their rescue through the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA. “We anticipated this and had been moving round the markets sensitising the traders on how to fight such fires,” Onyejekwe added.